Letters from Northanger
by rosedestler
Summary: Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, after reading many Gothic novels, wishes to help the heroine of another novel. Will her advice be good? And will Henry do anything about it? Complete
1. From One Heroine to Another

I wrote this fan-fiction a few years ago, and posted it elsewhere anonymously. Now I'd like to share it with you here. Some changes are made, in an attempt to make it better.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?_ -- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Volume I, Chapter v

Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, after reading many Gothic novels, wishes to help a heroine (who shall remain nameless) of another novel. Will her advice be good? And will Henry do anything about it?

Letter I – From one heroine to another

My dear friend (may I thus address you?),

We are, I believe, in similar circumstances. Having received and read your letter, I decided that I must not scruple to give you what advyce I can. Fear not to admit to yourself any suspicions you may have. I sometimes start at the boldness of my own surmises, and sometimes hope or fear that I have gone too far; but they are supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible. The General has done everything possible to prevent me from looking over the Abbey; and one room in particular, has he forbidden me. I must wait for an opportunity to unravel this mystery alone. – But more about me another time.

Consider those instances: 1st, on your first day there, at the walk, when he did not go after you. Was it not the favourite walk of his late wife? Ought it not, to endear it to her husband? Yet he would not enter it. He certainly had been an unkind husband. He does not love her walk: – could he therefore have loved her? Do you not feel persuaded of her unhappiness in marriage? 2nd, when the housekeeper told you about the picture of the late mistress, that he did not care for it! – a portrait – very like – of a departed wife, not valued by the husband! – He must have been dreadfully cruel to her! 3rd, does he not avoid her room? It is no wonder that he should shrink from the sight of such objects as that room must contain; a room in all probability never entered by him since the dreadful scene had passed, which released his suffering wife, and left him to the stings of conscience. 4th, does he not walk about a room? with the air and attitude of a Montoni? What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man! Does not your blood run cold with those horrid suggestions which naturally sprang? Could it be possible? – And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions!

I will now caution you from my own experiences. 1st, be not alarmed by the number of servants there. Here I am at an Abbey, yet how inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as I have read about – from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house was to be done by two pairs of female hands at the utmost. How they could get through it all, had often amazed Mrs Allen; and, when I see what is necessary here, I began to be amazed myself. 2nd, for privacy, do not hurry away to your own room after breakfast – the housemaids would be busy in there. 3rd, you, perhaps, are not so lucky as I am to find a fire ready lit, and will have to wait shivering in the cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening you by going in with a faggot! And 4th, have you an ancient housekeeper like Dorothee? and does she give you reason to suppose that the place you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted? Beware and take care! Another thing I wish to warn you about, Mr Allen has once told my that for young women to be driven about the country by men to whom they are not even related is objectionable, that it is not right, and has an odd appearance. I do hope you are being careful about that. I am writing to explain to you the indecorum of which you must be as insensible as I myself was, as you have no mother to advyse you. I mean it kindly. Yours ever,

Catherine Morland

Northanger Abbey

Gloucestershire

England

PS You are so like the heroines one reads about: you've lost both parents; you have a lovely name; and you are living in a strangely mysterious house! If need be, we may perhaps each escape from our dangerous place of abode and arrive at the same chateau. There we would be freinds; and there our heroes may find and rescue us; and we would all be happy ever after. What think you? RSVP, by return of post if possible, and tell me more about yourself. I'm so very interested to know how events unfold for you. Oh! I forgot to ask you – are there many doors that were neither opened nor explained to you? To what might not those doors lead? I have read too much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure might be introduced, and a supposititious funeral carried on. Yours, &c.

CM


	2. From the same to the same

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Letter 2 -- From the Same to the Same

Dear Madam,

Forgive me my last letter to you. I should not have encouraged in you those flights of fancy. Please, do not now take that letter seriously now. If you ever did, it is my fault. I have no right to advyse you, but I must warn you about my error.

The visions of romance were over. I was completely awakened. Mr Tilney's address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened my eyes to the extravagance of my late fancies than all their several disappointments have done. Most grievously was I humbled. Most bitterly did I cry. It was not only with myself that I was sunk – but with Mr Tilney. My folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him, and he must despise me for ever. The liberty which my imagination had dared to take with the character of his father, could he ever forgive it? The absurdity of my curiosity and my fears, could they ever be forgotten? I hate myself more than I could express.

Charming as are all Mrs Radcliffe's works, and charming even as are the works of all her imitators, it is not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the midland counties of England, is to be looked for. Of the Alps and the Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the South of France, might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented. I dare not doubt beyond my own country, and even that, if hard pressed, would yield the northern and western extremities. But in the central part of England there is surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of the land, and the manners of the age. Murder is not tolerated, servants are not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist. Among the Alps and the Pyrenees, perhaps, there are no mixed characters. There, such as are not as spotless as an angel, might have the dispositions of a fiend. But in England it is not so; among the English, I believe, in our hearts and habits, there is a general though unequal mixture of good and bad. Upon this conviction, I would not be surprized if even in Henry and Eleanor Tilney, some slight imperfection might hereafter appear; and upon this conviction, I need not fear to acknowledge some actual specks in the character of their father, who, though cleared from the grossly injurious suspicions which I must ever blush to have entertained, I do believe, upon serious consideration, to be not perfectly amiable.

Oh! dear Madam. I do hope you would learn from this, and not make the same mistake I have made. And I hope we may still be friends. I have just lost a friend in Isabella Thorpe. I have found out that she was a vain coquette. I do not believe she had ever any regard either for my brother James or for me. We should not have trusted her, and for so long! Yours ever,

Catherine Morland

Northanger Abbey

Gloucestershire

England

PS A copy of Mr Tilney's note to me is enclosed. Please read.

CM


	3. A Letter Enclosed

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Letter 3 -- A Letter Enclosed

To Miss Catherine Morland:

If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remembering the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you—Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?

Henry Tilney


	4. A Reply, or Truth and Happiness

A Reply; or Truth and Happiness

I have found out the truth. They are all fitting into place now, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I have tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they have never fitted. It seems incredible to me now that I have never understood. I wonder how many people there are in the world who suffer, and continue to suffer, because they cannot break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly build up a great distorted wall in front of them that hides the truth. This is what I have done. I have built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I have never had the courage to demand the truth. Have I made one step forward out of my own shyness, I would have learnt the truth long ago.

I am the self that I have always been before. I have not changed. But something new has come upon me that have not been before. My heart, for all its anxiety and doubt, is light and free. I know now that I am no longer afraid; that I am now free. Our happiness has not come too late. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.


End file.
